


Lies

by narsus



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 23:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All gods lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Avengers belongs to Marvel Studios, Joss Whedon and others. Thor belongs to Marvel Studios, Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Don Payne and others.

The muzzle is absurdly excessive. Typical, showy, pointless, Asgardian, excess.

“I will not let your lies beguile me again, brother.”

Which ones? That old chestnut about father being dead? Please. That wasn’t even skilful. Your father is dead and I am king. And by the way, mother doesn’t want you to come home either. Didn’t some small part of your brain even wonder at the convenience? Who benefited most from that situation? Who controlled the information that you received about it? Come on, brother! It was all so simple. Since when does the Alföðr himself succumb to mourning and grief so completely? Dead? His nature is to die in battle! Like all our kind. Your kind I should say. Perhaps, instead, I may die in my bed. Perhaps they will find my chambers covered with ice and frost clinging to my eyelashes. And then they will say that the Jötunn killed me, so perhaps it may be best that I die in battle after all.

“There will be punishment, but-“

But what, brother? What can you possibly do to me now? I have an inkling that it will be something suitably barbaric and that it will be designed to rob me of my speech, but there are ways and means to circumvent that. Ah, perhaps it will be more than that. Throw me to the beasts without my magic to protect me. I have children enough, my brother, to prove that I won’t be in any particular danger in that circumstance. What about the Jötunn? Oh, I will have fun with that if that is your solution. I am quite capable of breeding an army to rise against you. And you are ever vulnerable to the magics I would teach them. I will never be quite helpless. I cannot afford it. Not when I am surrounded by barbarians who would turn on me in an instant, simply because I am the weakest.

“I am sure that father will be merciful as well as just.”

Of course he will. I have seen his justice and his mercy. Perhaps you will consider my not being cast out a mercy. Of course you will. You will not realise it for the punishment that it is. He will keep me in Asgard so that I cannot work my tricks elsewhere. I will not be sent to Jötunheim. I would have the means to raise an army there. Nor Midgard, where I might wreak further havoc out of bitterness. Where then but Asgard? Where I can be watched and caged and restrained as _he_ deems fit. Which begs the question of why, as the simplest of solutions, can I not be killed? Because he has some further scheme nestled in his cunning old mind. No matter. I’m sure I’ll have time enough to figure it out. For want of anything else to do.

“I will see to it that you come to no harm.”

Absurdity. You make promises that you cannot keep, my brother. Promises that you believe, in your naivety, that you will be capable of keeping. The Nine Worlds are not so simple, my brother. They operate upon a grand logic that does not hold with concepts of justice or mercy. Gods are just as prone to foolishness as mortals. They are just as want to believe themselves masters of their own destiny. Did you know it was a mortal who told me that? That I will fail because it is in my very nature to. He was correct, after a fashion. I didn’t play this game to win, not in the way you thought it. I wanted… What I wanted hardly matters anymore. Yet… all I wanted was but a simple, childish, dream. I wanted to go home. And I will. In chains.

**Author's Note:**

> Passing reference to Angrboða and Svaðilfari of course.


End file.
